A carefully curated weekly newsletter finding signals of change and imagining better futures in technology, society, and culture.
No.420 — Fabien Girardin on curiosity as resilience ⊗ Feeling future shock? ⊗ Agent activities found on Wikimedia projects ⊗ Fifty billion seedlings ⊗ A medieval manuscript has confounded scholars for centuries
No.419 — Commodified Intelligence ⊗ Design fiction mood board ⊗ 2026 in LLMs (so far) ⊗ Who shapes the territory? ⊗ Boundary-breaking installations
No.418 — Beyond the Gaia-Borg dichotomy ⊗ Anthropic has set up a bio research lab ⊗ Germany is building an ark for US climate data ⊗ Human brain is two separate organs
No.417 — The map fiction missed ⊗ Cognitive integrity ⊗ The massive layer of life just beneath our feet ⊗ NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
Canada and the European Union are discussing an associate membership for Canada, a scenario I can’t recall seeing in science fiction or alternate history. Speculative maps of North America have usually split Canada into successor states or handed its pieces to rival blocs.
No.416 — The importance of reading (and teaching) cyberpunk ⊗ Anticipatory literacy coaching ⊗ AI’s next ethical dilemma ⊗ Solar desert power ⊗ Are crows really our friends?
No.415 — Integrated Strategic Forecasting ⊗ Fable solves the Cyphral Distich ⊗ Is the Arctic China’s new highway to Europe? ⊗ Black Hole Stars
No.414 — Permacrisis readiness ⊗ Marketplace to rent human faces ⊗ “Horrendous” cracks in homes after heat waves ⊗ The naturalist’s library
No.413 — The science of foresight ⊗ Librarians are hosting viral “Avoiding AI” workshops ⊗ What if we never built another new building? ⊗ Seoul’s outdoor library
No.412 — Techno-negativity ⊗ Billionaire derangement ⊗ The march to Stop the AI Race ⊗ Losing the ability to discover ⊗ How to talk about “AI” ⊗ Underwater kites
No.411 — Stacking spaces ⊗ Why Leonardo was a saboteur ⊗ Futuring through discomfort ⊗ Imagining a new digital commons for creative AI ⊗ Project Circle ⊗ Umberto Eco library opens in Bologna
No.410 — Solar abundance ⊗ Matter Battle ⊗ A Glossary for Other Worlds ⊗ Scarcity is driving AI innovation ⊗ Chock full of incredible animals ⊗ Big Think’s 5 favorite nonfiction books
No.409 — The golden age of Bond villains ⊗ Predictions Volume 1 ⊗ GLM-5.2 is a step change ⊗ Earth’s underground fungus network ⊗ Huge collections of Leonardo’s codexes
